Good Design for a Real Problem (2006)

I enjoyed the contrast between these sentences

> Levees built on sands washed down from hydraulic mining are being eaten from the bottom. 140 year old decisions are active problems.

> They have bellies and they can drive heavy machinery and they make jokes about the enviros. ... they are not environmentalists.

And so the problems keep coming. Not because of "these guys" in particular, but the attitude displayed. We clearly see the effect of bad decisions that were expedient in the past causing problems now and at the same time we can not limit our own desire for expediency and convenience at the expense of our future.

> Incompetent and bungling as we were, sandbagging goes shockingly fast. It must be astonishing to watch a crew with a few days’ practice; like fast motion film, but not.

I volunteered with a local volunteer emergency response team to respond to a flood in southern Indiana 3-4 years ago.

We were tasked with sandbagging for a while, even though it was fairly obvious that the river was going to flood the area too widely for sandbags to be useful. I helped with that effort for a while, risking my bad back in the process, and I agree: it does go very quickly.

It also made me think that a fair bit of any emergency response is for show: it probably won't help, but it can't hurt, so you throw people at everything until you run out of people or new data helps you refine what will actually work.

If nothing else it probably made the locals feel better than watching a bunch of people stand around doing nothing at all.

Fortunately I was able to later help in a more meaningful way, assisting with evacuations and providing security all night in hopes that the abandoned homes wouldn't be targeted by opportunistic thieves.

Unfortunately, despite our efforts, it turned out that someone (or multiple someones) from nearby communities used boats to hit some of the flooded homes, bypassing our security perimeter.

Frustrating to see.